There’s nothing worse that realizing the convenience we regularly enjoy as consumers is dissipating rapidly and supplies that we rely on are becoming scarce. This is what has happened in the past, and it will continue happening in the future.

Think back to times when we’ve experience shortages of supplies. There have been lines for gasoline. We’ve seen periodic shelf clearings of staples before winter weather. The grid has gone down, making people lose power for days – and with it, the ability to turn on the faucet and get clean water.

When the pandemic hit, we saw unusual scarcity such as a run on toilet paper, but other items, too – including food, hand sanitizer, baby formula, pet food, first aid supplies and more.

It’s an unsettling feeling – one that preppers hope to avoid. In order to properly plan for shortages, you have to understand the various causes, learn how to navigate the scarcity when it happens, and know what to do to minimize its effect on your family.

Understanding the Many Causes of Shortages

Before you begin preparing for shortages, you have to understand what causes it so that you can be on the lookout and be well prepared ahead of time. One thing that we saw during the pandemic was that the supply chains were interrupted for a variety of reasons.

Many of our goods are supplied to us from other countries overseas, so when their supply chain has an interruption, it trickles over to us and leaves our shelves bare. There is a dependence between countries as a network, and each one has their own vulnerabilities that can affect other people and places.

Not only did we see supplies dwindling down in terms of medications and food, but we also saw things like technology and even parts for cars being hard to gain access to at this time.

Sometimes, it’s not necessarily a ready made product, but a raw material that one country sources from another in order to create something for consumers. When this is interrupted for one reason or another, it can cause shortages around the world.

With the pandemic situation, there were manufacturers who shut down operations in order to stop the spread of the disease, so the lack of labor forced a halt of production, which meant no goods were getting to stores.

What you’ll often see is that it doesn’t take a major problem to disrupt everyone’s access to products. Even small circumstances can result in scarcity issues. Usually, these are resolved fairly quickly, and the consumer barely knows it has occurred.

There are other reasons why we may experience shortages of goods. For example, sometimes the weather in certain geographic locations can affect whether or not we have access to ample fruits and vegetables.

Or, if they are available, they may be at a price point that is heavily increased to reflect the short supply and high demand. Sometimes however, you can have weather events that are extreme and short lived, but they affect people in getting their necessary supplies.

A good example of this is when you have extreme cold or hot conditions that force a surge in usage of the grid. You will often see companies initiating rolling blackouts where they shut off people’s power in order to conserve energy, but that means you don’t have electricity or water.

It may even be a weather event such as a flood that causes problems in the immediate area in getting access to electricity and water. It can even affect your ability to get access to food if stores have shut down because their refrigeration system is no longer working or they cannot accept electronic payments.

And of course, we can’t forget that politics can play a role in whether or not we experience shortages of supplies. There is instability all over the globe, and the power plays that are happening can sometimes affect whether or not your country has access to certain resources.

Consumers primarily focus on things like gasoline prices and availability, but it can seep into other areas of trade, too. There may be a dispute between two countries about regulations or sanctions.

Peace of Mind Is Gained Through Scarcity Preparedness

If there’s one reason why survivalists prepare ahead of time, it’s to gain peace of mind. They want to go through life knowing that if anything occurs on a local or even wide scale for a short or long period of time, both they and their family members will be capable of enduring it with ease.

One thing you want to do is be able to somewhat predict what kind of scarcity you may have with the supplies that you need and want in your life. This requires you to be able to forecast global events and weather trends.

Of course, you don’t have a crystal ball and you can’t predict the future. However, you can stay informed and recognize where there might be potential shortages so that you can be proactive more than what you normally do in your survival preparations on a day-to-day basis.

You will already be stocking up on the supplies that you and your family need, but when you get one and even impending shortage, you can take additional action to reduce the effect of that shortage even more.

What you don’t want to do is immediately go out and hoard supplies in your area where you leave nothing for others. Awareness is key to knowing what you need to do and when.

Many people like to tune out of the news, whether it’s local or global news. But being aware of what’s happening politically, socially, economically, and in terms of climate and health news is going to give you leverage in a scarcity situation.

There are many people who were in the middle of America when the pandemic shortages began who were paying attention to news reports about store shelves being wiped out on the East and West coasts.

Because most people weren’t prepared ahead of time, they were able to go in the middle of the day as soon as news hit and scoop up more of the supplies that others did not get after they got off work and realized that there was an issue looming.

Sometimes, the news that you will hear is going to be so specific that you’ll know exactly what supplies are in danger of being short period that may be based on where the supplies come from, or the type of issue that is occurring, such as a health issue where hand sanitizer might be important.

It’s always good to know what your own economy is doing as well as others in different parts of the world. If you see signs of massive layoffs and low production levels, it may be a signal that supplies are going to start dwindling in the near future.

Try to understand the political tensions that are brewing around the world so that you know if a particular conflict is going to impede the supply chain. You need to know what types of goods come from which area so that you know if there is a problem in that geographic location, you’ll want to stock up on extra supplies ahead of time.

Once you identify a potential problem area, you want to increase your purchases without going into full panic buying mode. You don’t want your entire family scouring local stores, but you do want to gradually and systematically increase your purchases because you will be paying attention early on and have the time to do so.

This will require you to go through your records to see what you already have on hand and predict what your family will need for those items in the near future. Remember, this doesn’t just include food and water, but also hygiene products, first aid, and even pet supplies.

When you have your list, spend part of your prepper budget on securing more of these particular items instead of others that you may have planned on buying for a rainy day. You don’t want to buy more than what your family needs if it is something that may spoil or that could be considered a wasted resource if you have too much of it when others need it more.

In a worst case scenario, you will get one of an issue that is going to cause an extreme supply shortage, and you have no time to prepare. You can go ahead and place orders of items that are in stock and can be delivered to your home, but you can also go out in your local community and find what you need for you and your loved ones.

It’s best not to wait until the problem is imminent because you may end up being one of the people who can’t find items like toilet paper, food, baby formula, pet food, or medical supplies.

And if you do, what you’ll often see is that stores are price gouging for those items. During the pandemic, we saw people selling off the goods that they had gathered in those immediate days at a high price, and you don’t want to blow a budget having to purchase items in that way.

If this does happen, you want to keep an eye on supply chains and place orders so that when things do come back in stock, your order will be filled and you will have some of the delayed stock being sent to you rather than waiting until all of the store shelves are full again.

During the pandemic, it took many months for many big cities to see store shelves fully stocked with what they used to have. You could walk down a pasta aisle and see very few boxes or bags of consumer goods, and this was a startling, eye opening event for many individuals who then turned into serious preppers.

Immediate Adjustments to Be Made When Supplies Are Short

In addition to quickly securing some supplies if the shortage is imminent, there are other adjustments you need to make instantly. The first thing you have to do is prioritize your family’s needs.

When supplies are dwindling, you need to focus on what’s a necessity rather than a preference and then learn how to conserve what’s left of the supplies you do have on hand.

Minimizing waste is of utmost importance in these situations. Remember, your family may be used to the convenience of picking up goods whenever they need or want them, so they may not be familiar with having to conserve or not waste certain items.

You may have to teach them how to minimize their consumption, while still getting all of their basic needs met. This is something that is good to do ahead of time anyway, but if you haven’t done it to date, now is the time to do it.

Start by prioritizing food needs. You want to get foods that will last on your shelf for as long as possible, such as dried beans and rice or canned goods. If you have the ability to purchase specific dehydrated survival food buckets and MREs, that’s also a good option.

It’s important that each member of your family has their caloric needs met as well as their nutritional needs in terms of vitamins and minerals. Water is even more important than food, and if the item that is going to be scarce is electricity, that could affect your drinking water.

Make sure you have plenty of water purification options, but also pay attention to the news to see if you need to immediately fill containers in your home for a short term grid down situation where you wouldn’t have access to water.

You may want to go back and look at which medications and other items were affected during the pandemic in terms of supply chain interruptions. If anyone in your family has a specific prescription that is in danger of being scarce, you may want to ask their healthcare provider if they can have an extra refill that you can order when something is about to happen.

We saw a short supply of personal protection gear during the pandemic. Things like N95 masks, gloves, and filters were hard to find. You can order these far in advance so that you have them on hand in case of another health emergency.

If it’s a weather situation, where there is a strain on the grid, you may need to walk your family through some energy conservation methods where they limit the amount of power they are using and conserve resources in the home.

Some of the adjustments will include rationing supplies. This may mean there is slight discomfort from what they are used to, but it will help ensure that your supplies last through the survival event.

There may be a more severe situation where you run out of cleaning wipes, for example, and you have to make your own cleaners out of bleach and other items and use torn clothing as a substitute for your normal cleaning rags.

If the survival event continues, you may have to teach your family how to find other ways of getting things like water and food. This may mean collecting rainwater or minimizing the use of the water that you have on hand so that supplies don’t run out.

A little bit of creativity may help you get through some type of scarcity situation, and while it may be a little uncomfortable compared to what they are used to, it won’t be as disastrous as not having access to any supplies whatsoever.

Try to teach your family how to repurpose or substitute items whenever you are out of a certain supply that they wish they had on hand. There were people during the pandemic making their own hand sanitizer, and teaching others how to do the same online when supplies dwindled down to nothing.

If the survival situation lasts a long time, you may need to put your knowledge and skills to good use in order to adjust to the limited supply. For example, this may mean gardening and growing your own food or canning it so that it lasts.

Being Resourceful and Adapting When Supplies Are Scarce

in addition to adjusting how you are using your resources, you also have to adapt in other ways. First and foremost, there’s a psychological resilience that you have to develop whenever you are dealing with shortages of items that you are used to having at your fingertips.

This is something that can be more difficult for families who have younger children who may not understand the crisis that is looming at that time. But it’s not even easy for adults to navigate, and it will take a mental toll on your well-being if you are unprepared to deal with these stressful times.

Make sure you’re aware of and ready to deal with the stress and anxiety that can be triggered whenever your family has to go a long period of time without something they need or want.

Make sure you don’t react in anger to them or even to yourself when these emotions bubble to the surface. It’s a normal reaction to feel this type of disappointment and fear, especially if it’s something that feels like a necessity such as water, electricity, and food.

The awareness that you are going to tap into for your family is not something that you need to avoid just to keep your stress levels down. You need to stay aware, but that doesn’t mean immersing yourself in negative fear mongering 24/7.

By staying informed, you may be able to give hope to your family about supply chains and goods being back in the near future. Even just knowing what the current situation is, even if the news is bad, it can provide you with some peace of mind because you aren’t left wondering what’s going to happen.

If you or anyone in your family is experiencing heightened states of anxiety over scarcity issues, make sure you are cultivating a positive outlook for your family based on gratitude for what you do have and help them engage in some relaxation exercises such as deep breathing and meditation.

If you do have to make adjustments such as learning how to garden and preserve your own food, try to make it a fun activity that is interesting rather than a chore that is just another burden everyone has to deal with.

Let them know that this form of self-reliance is going to make them more resilient against any type of situation where others are nervous and they can be confident that they will get through it with ease.

If you take a proactive approach before there is a shortage, they will learn how to engage in things like portion control and water and power conservation and find happiness in the various creative ways they can reuse or repurpose items so that they are not simply wasting things with an overabundant lifestyle.

This may seem like a very eco friendly, sustainable slant that is based on an environmental issue, but it can actually serve you well with shortages in the supply chain, too.

Community Networking for in Demand Items That Are Short on Supply

Now that we’ve gone over what you can do personally, you also want to focus on how your community can work in supporting you if there is some sort of scarcity issue. Before this type of situation unfolds, you want to build a network in your community so that you know your neighbors and you know who you can exchange resources with if and when you need them.

We are in a society where people rarely know their neighbors anymore. And while you do want to network with others, it’s important that you don’t disclose all of your supplies which could put a target on you in some way.

The kind of networking you want to do is simply not being isolated to the point where you don’t have anyone to turn to if you are in a dire situation and there is a resource that you desperately need for your family’s well-being.

Having this type of tight knit community is important for safety reasons whenever there are shortages, as well. It provides additional security when neighbors are working together to offer protection to community members, but it also allows you to share skills and knowledge such as how to grow a garden or how to repair something if there are things in short supply.

There’s a sense of emotional relief when you know you can turn to a neighbor or community member and discuss your fears and find help with something that you need assistance with.

It’s also good to know people in your community that you can share the resources with period for example, if you grow more food than you can possibly eat and it is potentially going to spoil, you can exchange that with another neighbor for some supplies that you may need for your family.

You can either join a local community group or start one yourself and open up the channel of communication between your particular neighborhood or town. You might do this with the exchange of phone numbers, start an email list where you can send out a newsletter, or plan some in person meetups with like minded individuals.

There are some people who are starting survival communities where each person who is approved to join the community where they build a home bring something to the table that the other neighbors don’t have in terms of knowledge or supplies, such as a big tractor.

If you start one of these groups, not only do you want to make plans for sharing resources, but also help with the exchange of knowledge. This can be planning some training sessions where one neighbor teaches the others how to do something.

If your local community doesn’t yet have a food bank, you may want to start one period during the pandemic, there were local individuals who would set up a personal food bank at the end of their driveway so that people who couldn’t find food at their grocery store could simply take what they need and believe what they had to share.

Emergency Response That Can Shore Up Some Supplies

Preppers never want to fully rely on the government or emergency services when it comes to their needs and supplies. However, if you are in a situation where there are shortages happening, you do want to be aware of what is being offered so that you can take advantage of it if and when needed.

Emergency personnel will usually show up and serve local communities in the aftermath of a major weather event like a hurricane, for example. You can get food, water, shelter and other needs met if this happens.

Make a list and laminate it for all of the numbers of local, state and federal emergency services that you may need to get in touch with. Then stay informed with a NOAA weather radio about where to show up and what you’ll receive.

Many preppers will show up for basic supplies even if they have plenty of supplies because if they don’t show up, neighbors will know they have a stock on hand and it can make them a target for theft.

Being prepared for shortages is going to allow you to react calmly if anything happens to cause goods to be in scarce supply. There may be things you didn’t expect that occur, but your resilient mindset and ability to adapt will serve you well in those instances.